Guardian article: how I found the Engineer

Thursday, 2 August 2012

whole wide world

Ok the Olympics. I have to mention it. In ten
years’ time when Snooks reads this he will understand the huge deal this has
been. The Games are being held in our city. We saw the torch being carried past
the end of our road. We were close enough to touch the runner. We have
travelled across the city amid the panoply of Olympics visitors, identifiable
not by their foreign tongues (as hundreds of these are already part of our
city’s soundtrack) but by their expensive clothes and sensible footwear. We
have visited the park (though not bothered to try to get tickets for any
events, despite the Loads of Empty Seats row) and we happened to watch live on
TV the men’s gymnastics which afforded the country a silver then a bronze medal
for the first time in about 100 years. I cheered and Snooks mimicked as the
young men leapt and topple-tailed around the place showing that spotty stocky
shy teenagers can perform wonders

Speaking of wonders, the entertainment I conjured up for our
weekly supermarket shop yesterday was that Snooks was to
stand, wait for the starting beep and then sprint while I shopped and counted until he
reached the end. His P.B. is 6 seconds. And yes, the joke is Aisles of Wonder.

Ok so that brings me neatly to the opening ceremony which we
watched live and recorded so Snooks could see bits of it the next day. The
world seems to have liked Danny Boyle’s creative fun filled spectacle although
some of the references were a bit lost in translation. We got most of them and as a
native of Danny’s home town and a pillar of the neighbouring parish I felt a
particular warmth for the dark satanic mills, Abide With Me, the Brookside
kiss, the Beatles and of course Oh Danny Boy(le). Why did no clever hack pick
that one up? My sister who was at school with Danny’s sister reliably informs
me that they used to sing it about him as a joke…

Snooks was mesmerised by the scenes from children’s
literature which I had originally censored as Too Scary and he insisted on
watching the towering Voldemort and the roller skating Child-Catcher over and
over again. Such was the impact that we are ending each afternoon now with a
short reading from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – his first venture
into real big boy books.

And speaking of books (you see I did it!), thanks to a tip
from a friend we have found further indoor, free, character building
entertainment at the local library with Story Lab - a scheme whereby children
borrow six books over the course of the summer break and earn stickers on their
return after answering a couple of questions about the plot. Snooks is not a
stickers kind of boy but does like a chat so being asked by the librarian what
he thought of the books is reward enough.

Unfortunately the day we returned Edwardo, the Horriblest
Boy in the Whole Wide World (all about a boy whose bad behaviour gets worse and
worse the more he is scolded and improves only when the grown-ups start to
praise the best in him) the librarian was so overwhelmed she did not have the
time to hear Snooks’ views on it. I, for what it’s worth,
thought it merited an extra copy on the Parenting shelves.

So what with all that – with the international hoardstravelling on our tubes, with the fabulous
walk through the nation’s historical and cultural highs, with the dreams which
watching these young athletes will inspire and with the battle between Good and
Evil now lodged in his imagination, Snooks' whole world has widened considerably
over the last two weeks. And that is pure gold.